No Gonna Happen

Was the health care summit really about trying to pave the road for jamming the legislation through the senate using the reconciliation tool, inappropriately, to circumvent the filibuster in the senate? My answer. No.

President Obama has developed a scaled-down version of health care reform that would cost about a quarter of current plans and rely on parents covering children on their own polices until age 26, congressional and administration sources confirm to Fox.

Reconciliation would be bringing out the big guns to win a war that the American people don't want fought. It would only exacerbate the damage done to the sinking fortunes of the Democrats.

Administration officials say the plan is "not where we are now" and was drawn up at Obama's request after the devastating loss in the Massachusetts Senate race that cost Democrats their filibuster-proof majority.

Besides, if they really want to pass this thing, the house is the problem, so the focus on forcing something new through the senate is a diversion - the senate has already passed a similar measure to what the president is now proposing.

"It was ordered up by the president so he could get a sense of his options post-Massachusetts," said an administration official.

So what's the White House really up to? Saying goodbye to the Big Bill by making it look like a fight to the finish - trying to satisfy liberals that Obama hasn't sold them out, while setting the stage for passing something smaller, perhaps, later.

Democratic congressional sources say they have been briefed informally by "some" White House officials on the smaller bill's potential contents - which may also include an expansion of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, two federal-state health care partnerships that care for poor adults and children.